It's been a while and not much progress made. Mainly due to a combination of builders in working all along the side of the house where the new garden is supposed to be taking shape and to rain! Puglia in February is a lot like England in April.
Where I did try to dig over and sow carrot seeds I was being disrupted by cats. Without fail as soon as a piece of ground is dug over they are attracted to it like magnets ...... nice soft soil for them to scratch about in. I have a netting tunnel over the carrot rows now, no sign of anything germinating yet.
Today, as the builders are now working around the back and other side of the house, I managed to get back to work. I've diverted myself from the original work plan and am in the process of building an outside cat litter tray! Because the cats always head to newly dug soil I have fenced off a corner at the back of the garden with a low wooden fence. It's half dug over now, weed killer to be applied, and then we will fill it with sand. As the sand will always be the softest, finest "soil" in the garden, hopefully the cats will stick to using this area for their scratchings and doings! The cat sandbox will be surrounded on two sides with lavender bushes, Bob suggested curtains but not quite within my capabilities. The other two sides are not visible from the front of the garden or from the house.
This morning when I went down to the cantina to open up and feed the cats, as I was going down towards the entrance I could see something apparently stuck on the door beneath the cat flap. Further examination revealed that it was HedgePig, the hedgehog. Once I had got all the cats fed and out of the way, I checked out the inside of the door and cat flap and discovered that HedgePig had got one rear leg stuck in the cat flap on his way out. He must have hibernated downstairs in the cantina, woken up and tried to get out last night. As I gently levered the cat flap up he pulled his leg out and collapsed in a sideways heap outside. I left him there while I went to wake Bob (not best pleased at 6:30 am) to help me move him.
By the time we got back he was up on all fours ....... seemingly okay. We moved him to the covered wood store and gave him some milk and bread. When we checked later he had disappeared. I hope he is okay and stays in the garden - a gardener's friend, eating slugs and snails. HedgePig was here last winter, hibernating in the cantina so he is an old friend. A quick google and I found this great website with advice about taking caring for hedgehogs in the garden.
Unfortunately the forecast for tomorrow is more rain, I guess I will have to work on translating the March gardening calendar instead.
